


True Love's Kiss, Technically

by Fyre



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-23
Updated: 2012-04-23
Packaged: 2017-11-04 05:15:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/390163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fyre/pseuds/Fyre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Baelfire and Belle do some bonding, and both learn something they didn't know about the other and the curse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	True Love's Kiss, Technically

**Author's Note:**

> This was meant to be serious and descended to silly pretty quickly.

A red rose arrived every Monday morning without fail.

Belle tried not to notice them. It was getting more and more difficult. Bae held it out to her and she shook her head. It landed in the trash, just when the previous ten had ended up. 

“He’s not going to give up,” Bae said quietly.

“I know,” Belle murmured, drawing her feet up onto the window seat and drawing her woollen shawl around her. She didn’t want to venture outside again. The last time she tried going to the diner - which was standing inexplicably in the courtyard of Snow White’s palace - he was there, brooding over a cup of coffee. God knew why he needed it. He was already as tense as a wire. 

Their eyes had met for a split-second, and he started to rise, but she had fled.

Strange, she thought, that she was the one afraid now. 

The only person who really understood was Bae. Baelfire. The long-lost son, now a man, and now just as frustrated and wearied by his father’s hopeless attempts at apologies. 

It had been bad enough to be sent to the real world when he was fourteen, but when found out his father had somehow managed to build a dark curse big enough to swallow the world, just to find him, he was torn between wonder at his father’s devotion and horror at the price.

Emma Swan, now a Princess of the realm, was the one who found them both.

It was what she did. That was what she said when she led Belle back into daylight and Bae into Storybrooke. 

Both of them were grateful, but even as the curse crumbled the walls between the worlds and left them in a strange mixture of both, he was there, looking from one to the other, and he looked more afraid, helpless and hopeful than either of them had ever seen him.

Bae sat down in the window-seat beside her, looking out over the lake. 

They were staying in a room in the palace, out of the way of staring eyes. Bae had long been used to the suspicious looks cast at the child of Rumpelstiltskin, but Belle wasn’t accustomed to the sniggers and stares that followed her. Regina’s last little twist of the knife was to make sure everyone knew just who it was Rumpelstiltskin loved.

“We could leave,” he suggested quietly. 

Belle looked at him. Somehow, he’s nothing like she imagined, and yet exactly that. He was taller, broader, and darker, but something in his smile, something in his eyes was wholly his father. He reminded her of the days when Rumpelstiltskin wasn’t loathing the world or all the things around it.

“We can’t,” she said, shaking her head. “I can’t.”

He offered her his hand, and she took it, then shifted to curl against him. “You still care.”

“So do you,” she murmured. “You must want to hate him so much.”

His chest shook with a tired laugh. “You have no idea,” he said quietly.

She rested her head on his shoulder. “He knows why we’re upset,” she said.

“That’s why he hasn’t just come marching in,” Bae agreed. He released a heavy sigh. “I wanted to see him again, so much.”

She nodded unhappily. “The curse.”

“I know it could have been worse,” he said in a whisper. “I’ve heard the stories, of his magic being bound by deals. He was trying to stop, he wanted to make amends, but that curse…”

“No one was hurt,” she whispered, and somehow, their positions were reversing, his head on her shoulder, and her hand stroking his hair. “He kept everyone safe and closed away until the time was right. No one was hurt when it was cast.”

“Not by his hand,” he whispered, and his voice wavered, “but people died.”

Belle closed her eyes. “People died,” she agreed, trying to keep her own voice steady. “But people always die, come good or ill.” She pressed her hand to his stubbled cheek and lifted his face. “We have to remember it was so he could be done with it.”

Bae stared at her, then slowly sat back. “He still has his power,” he said. “The dagger.”

“Dagger?” Belle asked. They had been closed away together for weeks, but he never spoke of Rumpelstiltskin as the Dark One, only of his father. “But I thought it was a curse that was on him.”

“It is,” Bae agreed. “Technically. The dagger is the source of the power.” He got up and walked across the room. “He took the powers of the Dark One from the previous Dark One, when he used the dagger to kill him. The only thing that can take the powers away is to stab him with the dagger.”

Belle stared at him blankly. “No,” she said, remembering the words of a stranger on the road, months, years, decades before. “No, it’s not.”

He whirled around, staring at her. “What?”

She blushed. More than four decades alive, and still blushing. “True love’s kiss…”

Bae’s eyes fixed on her face. “True love?” She nodded. “You? And him? Would it work?”

“It would have before, if he…” She squealed as Bae scooped her up and flung her over his shoulder. She pummelled his shoulder. “Bae! Put me down! Put me down this instant! What do you think you’re doing?”

“We,” he said, and she could hear a smile in his voice. “We are saving my father.”

Belle froze, outraged. “I am _not_ kissing your father just because you decide to throw me at him!”

“There won’t be any throwing,” Bae said cheerfully, jogging up a flight of stairs, making her bounce and yelp indignantly over his shoulder. “There will be candlelight, romance, all those lovely sentimental things that girls like so much.”

She pinched his side spitefully.

He swore, losing his footing, and they both landed in a heap on the marble of the grand lobby of the palace. And, of course, they were surrounded by a thousand and one staring people who started backing away as Belle stumbled to her feet.

“You are an idiot!” she declared.

“You’re the one who fell in love with him!” Bae countered, grinning from ear to ear. “If I can’t save him, it has to be you.”

She put her hands on her hips. “I’m not kissing anyone on your say so,” she said. “And right now, I’m more than willing to try the dagger approach.”

“You told her?”

Both of them spun around to see the subject of their conversation standing some ten paces from them, looking more and more like a recalcitrant child, his hands tangled in front of him with obvious nervousness. 

“Someone had to tell the truth,” Bae said. “Like Miss-I-actually-true-love-your-father.”

Belle felt the blush rising again. “That was none of your business.”

“It is, if you’re going to be my step-mother.”

Someone in the crowd gasped. It might have been Rumpelstiltskin himself, but Belle was too busy turning on Bae.

“Oh, don’t think I wouldn’t put you over my knee,” she snapped. “You are really…I really don’t… you…” She threw up her hands. “I don’t know what you are quite yet, but you are exactly it!”

“And you’re the hero,” he countered, taking her by the shoulders and revolving her to face Rumpelstiltskin. He leaned down closer and whispered to her, “He wants to be saved. I can’t do it. Please?”

Belle raised her eyes to the ceiling. “Fine,” she sighed. “I won’t hear the end of it otherwise.”

Rumpelstiltskin was looking around wildly, like a rabbit trapped in the headlights of an oncoming truck, as she brushed his son off and stalked towards him. “Um. Dearie, you don’t need to do this…”

“If I don’t, your son won’t leave me alone,” she said, taking his face between her hands. His eyes were wide and round and panicked “I don’t know how you did it, but you produced someone as infuriatingly charming as you can be.”

“Belle,” he protested. “Not like this…”

She sighed. “I don’t need candles or romance or anything,” she said, and kissed him.

It was the applause that made her pull back a good few minutes later, pink-lipped and breathless. He was just as flushed as she was, and his eyes were the same deep brown as Baelfire’s. His lips quirked in a helpless smile as someone whooped. 

“What I meant,” Rumpelstilstkin said with a sheepish giggle, “was the audience.”


End file.
